Magnificent palaces, mosques and markets are Istanbul's most obvious attractions. But while revisiting the city, Linda Cookson instead faced seawards &ndash; and found a world of surprises on the waterway that divides East and West

For years, German submarines U-19, U-20, and U-23 were a terrifying presence beneath the waves, preying on British and Russian shipping. Then, 60 years ago, they suddenly vanished to the bottom of the Black Sea.

Everyone with blue eyes alive today – from Angelina Jolie to Wayne Rooney – can trace their ancestry back to one person who probably lived about 10,000 years ago in the Black Sea region, a study has found.

Twenty years ago, any Russian taking their holiday in one of the sanitoriums that line the Black Sea's rocky coast would have been the object of great envy. Now, the former playgrounds of Politburo members and the KGB are all but abandoned. Jason Oddy went to the Crimea to record their decline in words and pictures

TALKS WILL take place in Moscow today between Nato and Russian officials after the United States forced Moscow to postpone a deployment of peace-keepers to Kosovo. They were due to fly to the former war zone yesterday.

THE FOREIGN Secretary, Robin Cook, promised pounds 3m towards an ecological clean up after he saw yesterday the dire state of Russia's Arctic port of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, once the pride of the Soviet navy, but now said to be the world's biggest nuclear dumping ground.